SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE METAL TRADES
Approximately one-half of the total number of persons in Cleveland
engaged in manufacturing are found in the metal industries. When the
last federal census was taken nearly one-seventh of the entire male
population was employed in establishments engaged in the manufacture
of crude or finished metal products. Pittsburgh only, among the 10
largest cities in the country, has a higher proportion of its
industrial population working in such establishments. In relation to
its total population, Cleveland has twice as many people working in
these industries as Chicago, three times as many as Philadelphia, and
four times as many as New York. It is estimated that at the present
time the number of wage earners in the city engaged in this kind of
work is between 70,000 and 80,000.
The report deals with the three leading industries of the
city,--foundry and machine shop products, automobile manufacturing,
and steel works and rolling mills. The study of this last group also
includes several related industries, such as blast furnaces, wire
mills, nail mills, and bolt, nut, and rivet factories. About
three-fourths of the total number of wage earners in the city engaged
in the manufacture of metal products are found in these three
industries.
The field investigations consisted of personal visits to the
manufacturing establishments for the purpose of securing first hand
data as to industrial conditions, and conferences with employers,
superintendents, foremen, and workmen as to the need and possibilities
of training for metal working occupations. In all, 60 establishments,
employing approximately 35,000 men, were visited. The conclusions as
to vocational training were based on an analysis of educational needs
in the various metal industries, together with an extended study of
the social and economic factors which condition the training of all
workers. Particular attention was given to the administrative problems
involved in such training in public schools.
FOUNDRY AND MACHINE SHOP PRODUCTS
According to the United States Census, foundries and factories making
machine shop products gave employment in 1909 to nearly 18,000
Cleveland wage-earners. This industrial group ranks first in the city,
employing more than twice as many workers as the next largest
industry,--automobile manufacturing,--and approximately two-fifths of
the total working force in all metal industries. Its growth during the
previous five years, from the standpoint of number of workers
employed, showed an increase of about 33 per cent, and it is
estimated that the total number of wage-earners in 1914 was
approximately 25,000. At the present time, due to the impetus given to
this branch of manufacturing by the European war, the working force is
undoubtedly in excess of this figure.
The report gives extended consideration to the machinist's trade,
which constitutes by far the largest body of skilled workers in the
city. This trade has been affected more than any other by the progress
of invention and the modern tendency towards specialization. In many
establishments the all-round machinist, competent to do independent
work and operate the wide variety of machine tools now used in the
trade, had practically disappeared. In his place are found
"specialist" machine hands who have learned the operation of a single
machine tool, but have no general knowledge of the trade, and who if
called on to perform work requiring the use of a machine tool
different from the one on which they are employed are unable to do so.
There are hundreds of drill press hands who cannot operate a milling
machine, lathe hands who know nothing of planer work, and so on. The
subdivision of these occupations follows closely the advance in
invention, so that employers advertising for help frequently specify
not only the machine tool to be used but add the name of the firm
which manufactures that particular type of machine, with the result
that there are about as many kinds of machinists as there are
manufacturers of machine tools. Table 18 shows the estimated number
of men employed, with their distribution in the various branches of
the trade.
TABLE 18.--PROPORTIONS AND ESTIMATED NUMBERS EMPLOYED IN MACHINE TOOL
OCCUPATIONS, 1915
--------------------------------+------------+-------------+
| | Estimated |
Workers | Per cent | number |
--------------------------------+------------+-------------+
Lathe hands | 18.8 | 3,384 |
Drill press operators | 17.9 | 3,222 |
Bench hands | 13.4 | 2,412 |
Machinists | 12.7 | 2,286 |
Screw machine operators | 9.4 | 1,692 |
Milling machine operators | 8.6 | 1,548 |
Tool makers | 8.3 | 1,494 |
Grinding machine operators | 6.2 | 1,116 |
Planer hands | 2.2 | 396 |
Turret lathe operators | 1.8 | 324 |
Gear cutter operators | .7 | 126 |
--------------------------------+------------+-------------+
Total | 100.0 | 18,000 |
--------------------------------+------------+-------------+
Specialization has operated to lower standards of skill and keep down
wages. The average wage of the "all-round" machinist is very nearly
the lowest found among the skilled trades. The union scale is but 14
cents an hour above that paid unskilled labor, while the average
earnings of machine operators range from four to 12 cents above
laborers' wages. Only among the highly skilled tool makers do the
wages approach those received by skilled labor in most other
industries. Table 19 shows the average, highest, and lowest rates per
hour for all branches of the machine trades in the establishments from
which data were collected during the survey, with the per cent
employed on piece work and day work.
TABLE 19.--AVERAGE, HIGHEST, AND LOWEST EARNINGS, IN CENTS PER HOUR,
AND PER CENT EMPLOYED ON PIECE WORK AND DAY WORK, 1915
---------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+
| | | |Per cent|Per cent|
| | | |on piece| on day |
Workers |Lowest |Average|Highest| work | work |
---------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+
Tool makers | 25.0 | 39.0 | 50.0 | .. | 100 |
Machinists | 25.0 | 33.2 | 50.0 | .. | 100 |
Planer hands | 20.0 | 32.2 | 42.0 | .. | 100 |
Grinding machine operators | 20.0 | 32.0 | 50.0 | 70 | 30 |
Bench hands | 17.5 | 29.6 | 45.0 | 48 | 52 |
Screw machine operators | 17.5 | 29.5 | 63.8 | 79 | 21 |
Lathe hands | 19.0 | 29.1 | 40.0 | 40 | 60 |
Turret lathe operators | 25.0 | 29.0 | 47.5 | 80 | 20 |
Gear cutter operators | 20.0 | 26.7 | 40.0 | 96 | 4 |
Milling machine operators | 15.0 | 25.9 | 40.0 | 53 | 47 |
Drill press operators | 15.0 | 23.5 | 35.0 | 35 | 65 |
Machinists' helpers | 20.0 | 22.2 | 25.0 | .. | 100 |
---------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+
On the basis of weekly or yearly earnings, the trade makes a better
showing. Work is steady throughout the year, and the time lost through
unemployment on account of seasonal changes is slight. Also, as the
usual working day is from nine to 10 hours, that is, from one to two
hours longer than in the higher paid building trades, the difference
in daily wages is really less marked than a comparison of hourly rates
would seem to indicate.
Little attempt has been made to adapt the apprentice system to modern
conditions. The term of service and rates of pay have changed but
slightly over a long period of years. As a result only a small
proportion of the boys who begin as apprentices finish the
apprenticeship term of three or four years. Employers attribute this
to the relatively high wages paid for machine operating, and the
slight advantage, from a wage standpoint, of the "all-round" man over
the machine operator. After a year or two the apprentice finds that he
can double his pay by taking a job as operator, and the inducement for
learning the trade thoroughly is too small to hold him. The report
gives a comparison of the earnings of an apprentice and a machine
operator, both starting at the same age, the first becoming a
journeyman machinist at the end of three years and the second
specializing on a particular machine. Assuming that both boys go to
work at the age of 16 their total earnings up to the age of 25 years
will be approximately equal. The lack of thoroughly trained workmen is
beginning to be felt, but the efforts made by industrial
establishments to meet it have small prospects of success unless the
economic factors of the problem are given greater consideration.
Inasmuch as no regular apprenticeship period is served for machine
operating, a special effort was made to secure data relating to the
time usually required for the worker to learn the operation of each
tool well enough to earn average wages. In this matter the individual
opinions of foremen and superintendents differed widely, but when the
reports from all the establishments visited were compared, a
sufficient degree of uniformity was found to serve as a basis for
estimating the amount of experience workers of average intelligence
would need, under normal shop conditions, in order to become fairly
proficient.
There was practical unanimity in fixing the period at four years for
tool makers and three to four years for machinists. Higher estimates
were received from the superintendents of plants doing a jobbing
business or manufacturing high grade machine tools than from the
specialized shops making a single product. The superintendents of
automobile manufacturing plants, where the standard of quality in
production is necessarily high, gave the lowest estimates of all.
Table 20 shows the estimated time required to learn the various types
of machine work.
TABLE 20.--ESTIMATED TIME REQUIRED TO LEARN MACHINE TOOL WORK
------------------------------------+----------------------+
Workers | Time required |
------------------------------------+----------------------+
Grinding machine operators | 12 to 15 months |
Lathe hands | 6 to 9 months |
Planer hands | 6 months |
Gear cutter operators | 6 months |
Turret lathe operators | 4 to 6 months |
Screw machine operators | 3 to 6 months |
Bench hands | 3 to 6 months |
Milling machine operators | 2 to 4 months |
Drilling machine operators | 2 weeks to 4 months |
------------------------------------+----------------------+
The weakness of specialization, with its constant tendency towards the
substitution of semi-skilled operatives for trained workmen, lies in
its failure to provide a body of workers from whom to recruit the
large directive force needed in any scheme of production based on
semi-skilled labor. This condition is regarded by many employers with
grave concern, and in a few plants apprentice schools designed
primarily to train future foremen have been established.
Practically all the foremen in the shops visited had received an
all-round training as machinists, and there are few opportunities for
promotion open to men who have not a general knowledge of the trade.
On the other hand, such general knowledge is only one of the
requisites for advancement. Others are initiative, resourcefulness,
tact, self-control, ability to get along with men, and a disposition
to subordinate personal interests to the interests of the business. To
these should be added the quality of patience, for there must be
vacancies before there can be promotions, and vacancies among the
better positions are not frequent. Ten of the establishments visited,
employing a total working force of over 5,000 men, reported but eight
vacancies among foremen's positions over a period of one year. These
same establishments had in their employ a total of 618 all-round
machinists and tool makers. Assuming that only the machinists and tool
makers were eligible for promotion, the mathematical chance per man of
becoming a foreman during the year was about one in 77.
Other occupations studied in detail were pattern making, molding, core
making, blacksmithing, and boiler making. Pattern making offers the
most interesting work and the highest wages among the metal trades,
but the total number of American born pattern makers in the city does
not exceed seven or eight hundred, so the field of employment is
relatively limited. Molding and core making, in which between 4,000
and 5,000 men are engaged, have practically become foreign trades.
Less than 20 per cent of the molders in the city were born in this
country. These trades offer few opportunities for employment to boys
of native birth. Somewhat similar conditions exist in the
blacksmithing trade. Changed methods of production have largely done
away with the old-time blacksmith, who survives only in horse-shoeing
and repair shops. The proportion of native blacksmiths is steadily
declining, and it is unlikely that any considerable number of boys
from the public schools will enter the trade. The boiler making trade
employs relatively few men, the total number of native born boiler
makers at the time of the last census being less than 600. The trade
seems to be at a standstill. The increase during the previous decade
was less than five per cent against a total population increase of 46
per cent. The average earnings per hour for these trades in the
establishments visited by members of the Survey Staff are shown in
Table 21.
TABLE 21.--AVERAGE EARNINGS PER HOUR IN PATTERN MAKING, MOLDING, CORE
MAKING, BLACKSMITHING, AND BOILER MAKING
Average earnings
Workers Per Hour
Pattern makers .44
Skilled molders .39
Semi-skilled molders .27
Skilled core makers .39
Semi-skilled core makers .27
Blacksmiths .33
Boiler makers .32
The findings and recommendations as to training emphasize the fact
that the vast majority of boys who become workers in the metal trades
leave school by the time they are 15 with at most a common school
education, so that any vocational training before they go to work must
be given between the ages of 12 and 15 and before the end of the
eighth grade. The report points out the impossibility of effective
vocational instruction in elementary schools on account of the
prohibitive cost per pupil for both equipment and teaching, and
endorses the recently adopted junior high school plan. This form of
organization has the great advantage of concentrating in large groups
the boys who are old enough to make a beginning in prevocational
training, and through the departmental system of teaching offers
facilities for differentiation of courses to meet their varying needs.
Whatever their cultural value, the present manual training courses in
woodwork have little relation to the requirements of any metal working
trade, except pattern making, in which some of the same tools are
used. No manual training work in metal is offered in the elementary
and junior high schools.
The course recommended for the junior high school lays especial
emphasis on applied mathematics, mechanical drawings, practice in
assembling and taking apart machines, and the utilization of the shop
as a laboratory for teaching industrial science. The report maintains
that the object of such a course should be the development of
industrial intelligence through the application of mathematical and
mechanical principles to the solution of concrete problems, rather
than the teaching of specific operations and skill in the use of
tools. In mechanical drawing the ability to understand and interpret
drawings should be given more importance than the ability to make
drawings. Few workmen are ever called on to draw, while the ability to
read plans and sketches is always in demand. It is also recommended
that boys who do not expect to take a full high school course or who
intend to leave at the end of the compulsory period should devote at
least a period each week to the study of economic and working
conditions in industrial and commercial occupations.
With respect to the technical high schools the report holds that these
schools are primarily training schools for the higher positions of
industry. They undoubtedly offer the best instruction obtainable in
the city for the ambitious boy who wishes to prepare himself for
supervisory and managerial positions in industry or for a college
engineering course.
The establishment of a separate two-year vocational school, equipped
for giving instruction in all the larger industrial trades, is
recommended. The number of boys in the public schools between the ages
of 14 and 16 who are likely to enter the metal trades is between 700
and 800, of whom from 500 to 600 will become machinists or machine
tool operators. An enrollment of much less than this number is
sufficient to justify the installation of good shop equipment and the
employment of a corps of teachers who have had the special training
necessary for this kind of work. It should be possible to form a class
in pattern making and foundry work of from 80 to 100 boys, and one of
at least 30 in blacksmithing. Boiler making could be taught in
connection with sheet metal work.
Various changes are recommended in the present evening school classes
for machinists, molders, and pattern makers now given by the technical
high schools. It is claimed that the courses as now organized are not
elastic enough to meet the varying needs of the journeymen, helpers,
machine operators, and apprentices employed in these trades. The great
need is for short unit courses in which the instruction is limited to
a particular machine or a special branch of the trade. The long course
tends to discourage the student, especially when it embraces an amount
of theory out of all proportion to his working needs.
AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING
Due to the large number and specialized character of the occupations
in this industry, they are taken up in a more general way than the
"foundries and machine shop" group. The productive departments of the
automobile factories utilize in the main the same equipment as other
machinery manufacturing plants, but specialization has been carried to
a degree found in few other metal industries. The "all-round" workman
is a rara avis. The machine shops are manned by machine "specialists"
most of whom know how to operate a single machine tool or perform a
single operation made up of relatively simple elements. From one-half
to two-thirds of the working force is recruited from immigrant labor
which is "broken in" under skilful foremen within a period varying
from a few days to a few weeks. In the simpler assembling operations
the jobs are so subdivided that any man who is not actually
feebleminded can learn the work in a few days. Production is on a
large scale, permitting the maintenance of high-grade engineering and
experimental departments, where all of the work is planned to the last
detail. As a result the automobile manufacturers are turning out one
of the most complicated and most efficient machines known to modern
industry with a working force composed chiefly of semi-skilled labor.
For the machine shop workers the training suggested is similar to that
recommended for the same class of workmen in other machine shops. The
necessity of short unit courses adapted for teaching parts of the
trade rather than the whole trade is obvious, as most automobile
workers are employed on specialized operations. Short unit evening
courses for motor and transmission assemblers, and testers and
inspectors, are recommended.
STEEL WORKS, ROLLING MILLS, AND RELATED INDUSTRIES
A somewhat similar treatment is followed with respect to the iron and
steel group of industries--blast furnaces, steel mills, rolling mills,
wire mills, nail mills, and bolt, nut, and rivet factories. These
industries are characterized by a high proportion of common and
semi-skilled labor in the working force. Between 75 and 90 per cent of
the workers are of foreign birth. In the operating department of one
mill only two Americans were found among a total of 600 employees. As
a rule the native born workers are mechanics employed in the power and
maintenance departments.
With scarcely an exception the occupations are of a nature that
require the worker to learn through actual experience in the mills.
Theory and practice must be learned at the same time. Even the
supervisory and executive positions in which a technical education is
of considerable value require a long and arduous apprenticeship on the
job before the worker can compete with men who have started with the
scantiest educational equipment, but have picked up a knowledge of the
processes by experience and observation. Below these positions the
work rapidly grades off to various kinds of machine operating in which
not even the ability to read or understand English is required.
No plan of vocational training is presented, because at present the
mills recruit almost exclusively from foreign labor, and only a very
small number of boys from the public schools are likely to seek
employment in them. The technical content of the work which might
conceivably be given in evening classes, except in the case of the few
directive and supervisory positions, is so small that continuation
instruction offers but meager hopes of success. Under present
conditions the long working day and the necessity of changing from
the day to the night shift, or vice-versa every two weeks, constitutes
an insuperable obstacle to the organization of night classes.
The principal need of the rank and file is a speaking and reading
knowledge of the English language, so that the workers can be taught
to avoid and prevent accidents, and give themselves the necessary care
when they occur. Instruction in English with possibly courses in
accident prevention and personal hygiene represent about the only
training possible that can be said to have any real vocational
significance.